Inferno (Hackett Classics) (English and Italian Edition) - Softcover

Dante Alighieri

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0872209172 ISBN 13: 9780872209176

Publisher: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc., 2009

Synopsis

An attractive new alternative as both a translation and a pedagogical tool. The volume includes an excellent introduction by Dante scholar Steven Botterill (Univ. of California, Berkeley), clear and informative notes by lifelong Dantist Anthony Oldcorn, a concise bibliographical note that indicates some important sources on Dante in print and online, and a diagram of Hell; Index of the Damned lists characters who appear in the canticle. The translator's preface explains Lombardo's choices as he faced the always-challenging task of rendering Dante's poetry into English. Among the most interesting choices are the occasional use of rhyme--especially in key passages and at the end of each canto, where interlocking rhymes that mimic Dante's terza rima are consistently employed--and an emphasis on creating a version that works well as an oral presentation, following the long tradition of private, public, and theatrical readings of the poem. The volume includes the original Italian text, thus facilitating classroom references and comparisons. --Rebecca West (Department of Romance Languages and Literatures, University of Chicago) in Choice

About this title

About the Author:

Stanley Lombardo is Professor of Classics, University of Kansas.

Steven Botterill is Associate Professor of Italian Studies, University of California, Berkeley.

Anthony Oldcorn is Emeritus Professor of Italian Studies, Brown University.

Review:

Lombardo s Inferno is a translation that resourcefully mines the words and narrative of Dante for suggestions, implications, motives, and potential disclosures that only locally vivid English, an attentive and active and daring imagination, and exegetical verve and nerve can give proper voice to. Lombardo s renderings are concrete, interpretive, expository, and explanatory; they are also resolutely colloquial, racy, and sometimes ruthlessly explicit.
Anthony Oldcorn s notes add the seasoned, Virgilian guidance one expects from a lifelong Dantist. The generous, notably informed, and oftentimes pleasingly wry and urbane annotation is designed to keep beginning readers on track while making them more informed; it offers somewhat practiced readers a chance to rethink the text at critical points with the aid of a senior scholar. Prose arguments at the head of each canto foreground and efficiently retail the verse narrative that follows. The text is also fully equipped with a strong and passionate Introduction that begins strategically with the De vulgari eloquentia. All in all, this is a dual-text Inferno that packs in as Dante s retributive hell itself does God s plenty. --James C. Nohrnberg, Professor of English, University of Virginia

This new Inferno is very quickly going to become a favorite. The translation itself is unusually dynamic and returns to the poem a register of daily speech that increases clarity and energy. It never loses sight of the fact that the Inferno tells an intensely involving story.
This volume also offers real help to the novice reader. The synopsis printed at the beginning of each canto; the detailed commentary on each canto, at the end of the book; and, most importantly, a really excellent Introduction all these give the reader constant and multileveled guides to the journey. --F. Regina Psaki, The Giustina Family Professor of Italian Language and Literature, University of Oregon

About this edition

• Publisher: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc.
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 0872209172
• ISBN 13: 9780872209176
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 488
• Editor: Oldcorn Anthony